The Performances

First Lessons: The Wisdom of Phyllis McGinley
Saturday, June 5, 2004
8 P.M.
St. Andrew's Church, 163 Main Street in New Paltz
Admission $7
* * *

"Getting along with men isn't what's
truly important.
The vital knowledge is how to get along with a man. One man."

Poet Phyllis McGinley was born on March 21, 1905 in Ontario, Oregon. Even as a teenager McGinley's poetry was published in such distinguished magazines as The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Because her poetry celebrated suburban landscape and home life, she was often dismissed as being a lightweight and whimsical poet, not one to be considered seriously. But her airy verses, which seemed effortless and weightless, contained wit and serious commentary. She also wrote a series of autobiographical essays about being a suburban housewife. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1961.

Phyllis McGinley was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955. She was the first writer to win the Pulitzer for her light verse collection, Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades with Seventy New Poems (1960).